CITY ROOM; Hard Work and Pride Alter A Block’s History of Blight

By DAVID GONZALEZ

Published: April 6, 2013

You do not want to mess with Arnaldo Rivera on Kelly Street. He had heard plenty about this crescent-shaped block off Longwood Avenue in the South Bronx. Drug dealers and addicts had holed up in filthy, crumbling apartments scattered among five buildings that were among the city’s worst. He was ready. He had a gun.

A caulking gun.

Mr. Rivera is the new super for these five newly renovated buildings on Kelly Street, a block that had earned its place in South Bronx lore for having spawned a generation of urban homesteaders who took abandoned buildings in the 1970s and turned them into homes for working people. More recently, that block was infamous for the five buildings that had been ravaged by fire, drugs and squatters while rent-paying tenants lived in sooty apartments with mold the size of mice and rats the size of cats.

Not anymore.

“I heard this was not a good area,” admitted Mr. Rivera, who became the super three months ago. “But thank God I’m working here now. The neighborhood changed a lot. And I have to say, the tenants are good. You can see. I talk to them and say, I provide a service, but you have to help, too. We all live here.”

The transformation is almost impossible to believe. To Harry De Rienzo, it’s just another page in the block’s history. He has been working with tenants here since he was fresh out of college. He helped organize them as they took over and fixed several buildings that became the foundation for the Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association.

After a stint running a housing-related foundation, he returned to Banana Kelly as president, tackling the problems on five buildings that had gone from being owned by Frank Potts, a live-in landlord, to being pawns in a mortgage flipping binge after he sold them in the mid 1990s. He said the mortgages on the buildings had gone from $800,000 at the time to $5 million in 2010.

The landlords – a series of owners who appeared on paper but hardly in person – did little with that money. Fires broke out in some of the apartments. In others, fuzzy black mold covered cracked walls. In 935 Kelly Street, human waste had pooled in the basement, garbage sat in the lobby while five pitbulls were cooped up around the clock in one apartment. In the other buildings, entire windows were missing, as was heat, hot water and the super.

“The tenants were basically under siege,” said Mr. De Rienzo. “I never saw any evidence of the landlord’s investment. Maybe he did do something – I think this guy became a millionaire off the misery of the people living there.”

Mr. De Rienzo – who had been brought in by weary tenants to administer the buildings – partnered with the city’s housing agency, private developers and financiers to fix the mess. That was all Carolyn Waring and her brother Willie needed to know. Their stepfather was Mr. Potts, who had raised her and her siblings to work with Harry in the old days.

Willie said like all of the Potts family members – many of whom still live on the block, although he recently retired to Delaware – he grew up fixing things rather than letting it slide. He helped put a new roof on one building decades ago. His sister learned how to unclog seriously backed-up basement drains.

“Pop believed in each one, teach one,” Ms. Waring said. “So whenever he did work in the building we did too.”

That carried over to the bad days, when her nominal landlord did nothing but collect rent. She cleaned her hallway, swept the sidewalk and even paid for hallway lights.

While the building was being renovated, she stayed with her sister down the block, keeping an eye on the progress. The day she spied new appliances being delivered, she could barely contain herself.

“”It was like Christmas morning,” she said. “I wanted them to hurry. But I also wanted them to take their time and do it right. But the kid in me was excited!”

When she got the keys to her new, four-bedroom apartment, her own daughter was so excited, she slept on blanket spread out on the new living room floor. Ms. Waring has since joined her, marveling at the little things: a well-lighted hallway, a modest bedroom closet, and a pass-through to the kitchen – the first time this building had a hole in the wall that was done on purpose. And just like Pop taught her, she’s bringing a friend to the next meeting of the block’s garden club.

She plopped herself down on her new sofa and beamed.

“I got the best of it,” she said. “I got to see history being made here. I was part of the devastation and the rehabilitation. We were living in the depths of hell. Now it’s bright and airy. It’s so new. And hopeful.”

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.

PHOTO: Carolyn Waring in her renovated apartment: “We were living in the depths of hell. Now it’s bright and airy.” (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID GONZALEZ/THE NEW YORK TIMES)